Yes, Really . . . A Store-Bought Tomato
With Vine-Ripened Taste!

Hormones! They're important to the human body's growth and metabolism. For
similar reasons, they're also vital to plants.

Of the five major plant hormones, auxin has been known the longest and is
probably the most important.

Auxin causes a tomato to grow and ripen, according to
ARS plant physiologist Jerry D. Cohen.
And if scientists can learn more about this plant growth hormone, the result
could be a store-bought tomato that tastes home grown. Cohen is working toward
that goal at the ARS Horticultural Crops Quality Laboratory in Beltsville,
Maryland.

"If we can determine how auxin is made in a plant, then we can change
the concentration, or level. We also need to know how much is made and how it
is broken down," he says.

During ripening, auxin degrades to low levels, often resulting in
overripening. "Since we want to delay ripening," Cohen says, "we
want to increase the levels at this stage of growth. If we raise the auxin
levels, we slow down ripening and increase shelf life."

Growers now pick tomatoes when they're still green to ensure that they'll
ship well. If tomatoes were picked fully ripened, they'd deteriorate before
reaching the grocery shelf. Tomatoes from the produce bin in supermarkets are
often hard and tasteless simply because they were picked green, before being
given time to ripen on the vine.

Cohen says that scientists have been working with auxin for more than 120
years. One problem, he says, is that when researchers changed auxin levels, the
changes were expressed throughout the plant. Scientists would like to control
auxin production so it can be introduced into particular, targeted tissues.

To change auxin levels in fruit, it was important to first find out how
plants make it. Earlier studies suggested that this plant hormone was made from
tryptophan, an amino acid.

Cohen and colleagues showed that plants that don't make tryptophan can still
make auxin. Until now, auxin production was studied only inside whole plants or
cells. But Cohen has reproduced this hormone outside the cell, where it can be
studied in greater detail.

Changing From the Inside, Out

Cohen and associate Mridula Iyer, working with plant molecular biologist
Janet P. Slovin of the ARS Climate Stress Laboratory in Beltsville, are looking
at genetic methods to alter auxin levels. They inserted a backwards copy of
iaglua gene from corninto a tomato. The purpose was to turn
this gene off in the tomato. Because the backward gene was put in with a
fruit-specific promotera piece of DNA placed in front of the gene that
controls when and where that gene will be "turned on"the
activity was changed only in the tomato fruit.

"We specifically changed the hormone levels in the fruit, but not in
other parts of the plant," Cohen reports. "Tomatoes from this genetic
research ripened more slowly, but not enough to make a major difference."

Future work is aimed at using a native tomato gene in the same way to alter
the biosynthesis of auxin. Just as important is determining the plant's ability
to destroy or break down the hormone when the fruit is in the very early, or
"breaker," stage of ripening.

Cohen and colleagues discovered some other interesting aspects of the
iaglu gene. Decreasing the gene's level of expression throughout
receptor plants caused them to easily form large numbers of roots from cuttings
and spurred rapid root growth in germinating seedlings.

This could significantly help in developing techniques for plants that are
difficult to root from cuttings and increase the survival rate of seeds planted
in dry soils.

"We also got seedless tomatoes from overexpressing the corn gene
specifically in fruit," Cohen says. "Because it didn't happen every
time, we're trying to determine if the cause is directly linked to the gene or
is just a result of transforming the plant."

Cohen expects the auxin research to produce vine-ripened tomatoes with
increased shelf life, better flavor, and enough firmness to last until the
consumer plucks the fruit from the produce bin for a salad or sandwich.